


They Won't Even Hear Your Prayers

by Goethicite



Category: The Hitcher (2007)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 15:48:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goethicite/pseuds/Goethicite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you give even a piece of yourself to the desert, the desert will want you back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Won't Even Hear Your Prayers

The thing about New Mexico is, despite the hell Grace had experienced there, it was the only place she could breathe. After the Incident, she left for Maine. The rain made her cold, and the houses felt like they would crush her between their walls. So Grace packed her single duffle and drove to Montana. She lasted a week among the cowboy hats and rolling plains before she sold her crappy little Volvo and blew a stupid amount of money Corvette C6 ZR1. Her parents footed the bill at her therapist’s insistence that her interest in fast cars was a healthy way of dealing with the trauma she’d experienced.

The same therapist was shocked when Grace floored it and pulled on to I-25 going south in the middle of nowhere. With both windows rolled down, the screaming wind drowned out anything but the feeling of shifting gears. The sun burned in Grace’s eyes as she followed desert-given faith that would make religion cry.

Right after it-that-what-will-never-be-spoken-of, Grace had moved back in with her parents. The big house with its white-washed exterior and wrought iron gates seemed as foreign as Casablanca. School no longer was an option when Grace couldn’t sleep without clutching the grip of a revolver . Her mother hovered, and her father huffed and tried to pretend his little girl wasn’t dead and buried in a shallow grave by the side of a highway in the middle of the open plains between the mesas. They pretended the light-stepping, wary eyed woman who prowled the house, her hand close to her gun, and only smiled perfunctorily when someone smiled at her first wasn’t real.

They, her parents and their supporting army of mental health specialists, asked her what she wanted, what would make her happy. She didn’t say, “Tying up John Ryder and skinning him slowly.” Not that torturing Ryder to death would have made Grace happy. It just seemed like the thing to say. Instead she said, “I want to learn how to drive.”

So her father got her lessons from an unnamed firm. She spent three weeks in the classroom for nine hours a day, not including the hour break for lunch, learning about how cars worked in the context of taking a bullet to the engine block. Her classmates were cold-eyed men with military tattoos and short hair. Every day she ate her lunch just out of arms reach of them at the picnic benches with her back firmly to the wall. None of them mentioned the jacket she never took off or the flash of metal when she moved her arms too quickly.

After the days of stuffy classroom work, she slipped into the heavy sedan with her instructor for the first time. His gentle smile and big, black hand on the emergency break got her through her first lesson. After that, she didn’t need the reassurance. Grace wasn’t a big woman, but the size of the driver didn’t matter. After perfecting her spins, slides, and recoveries, she asked the gentle smile about killing a man with a car. His smile went grim, and Grace was introduced to Mack.

Mack didn’t ask why. Instead he told her about clipping a man with a fender. About running down a killer with a gun. He set up mannequins. Grace wreaked them with her lips pressed into a pale line.

Her final test was a series of rams, swerves, and recoveries like the rest of her class. But, she joined the small group who had to take down the swinging silhouettes arranged over the course. Not one remained when she was done. As a graduation gift, Mack gave her the name of a man who could teach her the things she didn’t want her parents finding out about.

The guns, the knives, the barehanded fighting, Grace called it ballet lessons and her mother signed the checks. Maybe it was willful ignorance, but Grace liked to believe that her mother just wanted her daughter to feel safe. It was a gift that Grace wouldn’t waste. Her father helped her fill out the papers that made her little revolver and much bigger semi-automatic legal. When the question, “Have you ever been under the care of a mental health professional?” came up, she could honestly answer no. Her parents had been the ones doing all of the talking at the therapists.

With her new knowledge and the heavy weight of her weapons, Grace had felt prepared to face the world outside her parents little cocoon again. She’d packed a single duffle and taken her old Volvo east looking for peace. Until, she turned the wheels of her shiny new, silver ZR1 onto the interstate she hadn’t found it.

New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment. New Mexico, the beautiful, distant background to Grace’s nightmares. She could taste the dust on her tongue and feel the sun beating down on the roof of her car. Outside of Taos, she stopped to buy herself a case of water. A flick of her wrist and a small pocket knife slit the plastic so she could dump the bottles on the floorboards of the passenger’s seat. She stared at the bottles laying there shiny and soft in the harsh sunlight. Some days, it seemed like there wasn’t enough water in the world to make her forget the walk through the desert. Other days. Today. She wasn’t thirsty at all.

Still, she picked up a bottle and drained the blood-warm contents. Crumpling up the plastic, squeaky and greasy from the heat, she stared down at her heavy boots. Steel toes and ankle support. To run, to kick, to move like a killer. Not some silly, little girl in Uggs and a mini-skirt, she reminded herself. Steel toes and Carhartts to go with her cami these days. Still, the grip of her gun was hot like adrenaline beneath her fingertips. No. No silly, little girls lived here anymore. Not in New Mexico under skies you could drown in.

Grace breathed.

“Fifty-nine thousand, nine hundred and twenty-seven miles of highway, Grace. And somehow, you come back to me.” Ryder hadn’t changed. He was still rough around the edges, eyes a little too maniac, smile a little too unguarded. Grace liked shotguns. She had very illegal sawed-off Mossberg in her trunk. Her little .38 revolver was all she need for this message.

Her nightmare leaned against the door of her Corvette, admiring the lines of her convertible. The lines of her in the gentling sun. He didn’t look like he did in her dreams, with blood on his face and his teeth scattered across the asphalt. So she smiled when she ordered, “Get in.”

The muzzle of the revolver tracked his movements around the car. He was smiling right back. “What do you think that gun is going to do, little slut? By the way, I like the new look. Military porno?”

“Something like that,” Grace replied feeling the words roll of her tongue like they were someone else’s. But the words were hers, because John Ryder had killed her. This woman that she was, “There’re no slutty, little school girls left now.”

He knew what she meant, because he just smiled wider as he settled in the passenger’s seat. Grace lifted the revolver to his temple and considered pulling the trigger. Cooler than the air, his hand settled possessively high on her thigh. Thick fingers dug into the muscle underneath skin and canvas just on this side of painful. If he held any harder, Grace would have killed him. Damn the blood on her leather interior. Instead, she holstered the gun and held out her hand. “Water.” Ryder cracked the lid before he handed it over.


End file.
